Very much Truth in Television as a good monkey wrench (also known as a pipe wrench) can be made of very sturdy materials, and some can weigh quite a bit on top of that. So, in a pinch, you can very easily break someone's skull wide open if you hit'em hard enough.

The Castle of Cagliostro: Lupin wields a large wrench from one of the Clock Tower's tool racks against the Count. This is a case where the wrench's size is justified: The machinery in clock towers uses big bolts, which consequently need big wrenches.

While we're on the subject of the Wachowskis, Speed Racer features a fight scene in which a monkey wrench is wielded by, appropriately enough, a monkey.

Yeah, the Wachowskis really like this trope. In Cloud Atlas, a hitman played by Hugo Weaving gets a giant wrench to the back of the head courtesy of a tiny Hispanic woman played by (who else) Korean actress Doona Bae.

At the end of The Toolbox Murders remake, Coffin Baby tries to kill Nell with a wrench, but she fends him off long enough for the police to show up and shoot him out a window.

The Texas Vibrator Massacre ends with the main character being beat to death with a wrench by Porn!Leatherface's father and sister.

The Cannonball Run: In the brawl with the bikers, J.J. punches a huge biker in the face several times to no effect in a Punch! Punch! Punch! Uh Oh... moment. The biker mockingly points to the other side of his jaw and suggests J.J. try there. J.J. says "Thanks" and immediately smacks the biker across the face with a spanner.

In Breakheart Pass, the engineer clobbers the trooper acting as his fireman with a wrench just before being shot by Deakin and Major Claremont.

Literature

Sergeant Julio Poertena from the Prince Roger series uses a "big pocking wrench" to dismantle jammed power armour and hostile cannibalistic aliens with equal gusto. In the former case, Percussive Maintenance is actually better at unjamming powered armor than the official method.

In one of the Doc Savage novels, Ham - having been on the receiving end of yet another one of Monk's practical jokes - picks up a monkey wrench and whacks Monk in the head hard enough to knock him out.

Young Sherlock Holmes: In Red Leech, Grivens attempts to kill Sherlock with a large engineering spanner in the ship's engine room.

The Bastard Operator from Hell once used a large Stilton wrench to sabotage the board's new secure room, first by smashing the comms panel and then to close a stopper and flood the secure room in sewage.

Live-Action TV

The A-Team, "Knights of the Road": when Tyler's men move in on her, Jenny picks up a wrench and swings at them. It ultimately does no good, and one of the men takes the wrench from her to bust up her and her father's tow truck.

Adrian Shephard in Half-Life: Opposing Force has one. It's stronger then Gordon Freeman's crowbar but swings slower. He later gets a combat knife which is weaker but swings faster.

Team Fortress 2: the melee weapon of the Engineer. It is used for hastening building, repairing and upgrading the Engineer's buildings. Other uses include hurting people - and the wrench is good at it, hitting critically often because Sentries do a lot of damage - especially removing Spies and their sappers from the Engineer's guns' vicinity. Variants include the Southern Hospitality, implemented with a sharp piece of metal and a spiked handguard, which cause the hit enemy to bleed, the Jag, which hastens building even more but doesn't hurt as much, and the Eureka Effect, which can teleport the Engineer back to spawn or his teleporter exit (and after the Meet Your Match Update, build teleporters at half cost) at the cost of half the construction speed and half metal from ammo boxes and dispensers.

System Shock 2 has a wrench as a weapon. On the harder difficulties, it's pretty much the best weapon available.

Since BioShock is a spiritual successor to the System Shock, it would naturally feature a wrench as the first available weapon. With the right Tonics and Plasmids, the wrench goes from a weak Emergency Weapon to the sole weapon you use. Tonics can boost the wrench's damage, swing speed, and even give it Life Drain, meaning you can run headlong into a group of enemies swinging wildly and come out with more health than you had going in. There are also Tonics intended for stealthy players that give huge damage boosts to the wrench on enemies that aren't aware of your presence... except no stealth is actually required, since stunning an enemy with either Electro Bolt or Insect Swarm will make the game count them as not being aware of you.

A wrench identical to the one in the first game shows up in Bioshock Infinite. Booker doesn't wield it though; Elizabeth knocks him out with it when she finds out he's actually kidnapping her, not rescuing her. Ironically Elizabeth is later beaten to death with a wrench in Burial at Sea.

Heimerdinger from League of Legends; he doesn't whack minions and champions with his wrench though, he throws them.

Dark Cloud 2 features Max using wrenches as his primary melee weapon from the beginning of the game. It can be upgraded to many different, more combat-designed wrenches, including Smash Wrench, Drill Wrench, and Poison Wrench.

Wrenches are used by Engineers in Makai Kingdom with the Tech Bash skill, and possibly as an equippable weapon.

Rocky Wrench from the Super Mario Bros. 3 airships and their subsequent appearences. Notably, when defeated in Paper Mario: Sticker Star, they sometimes drop a Wrench sticker that allows Mario to whack people with wrenches too.

In Super Robot Wars, Super Robot Gunleon carries a number of these, ranging from ones that are appropriately scaled to fit in its hand like a human's would to a normal wrench, to wrench nunchucks, to a massive crescent wrench almost as tall as it is. Naturally, these are used to bash or crush enemies, but the largest wrench will occasionally become an enormous crushing clamp... with a Pile Bunker situated at the joint of its jaws.

In Fallout: New Vegas, a particular quest implies a wrench was used to murder a NCR Engineer for his outfit. Strangely, wrenches still aren't useable as weapons. You can use a lug wrench or a piece of piping but you can't use an adjustable wrench.

In Fallout 4, the pipe wrench is actually a fairly effective melee weapon at low to mid levels, thanks to the weapon mod system, as it gains mods that not only boost its damage, but also increase its chances of crippling a target or deal extra damage to limbs.

In Banjo-Kazooie: Nuts & Bolts, Kazooie carries around a magic Wrench that, aside from carrying stuff around via Tractor Beams, can be used as a melee weapon.

And in Banjo Tooie's Grunty Indutries there were worker enemies who'd try to whack the bear and bird with their enormous wrenches.

In Wasteland 2 NPC Angela Deth comes equipped with a wrench as hand-to-hand weapon: it is very effective.

Guild Wars 2's Engineer has the Tool Kit skill that replaces weapons with a wrench used to repair turrets and as a melee weapon, and the Heart of Thorns expansion adds the Scrapper elite specialization that allows the Engineer to use hammers and along with it two hammer skins in the shape of massive wrenches (that any other class that uses hammers can equip too).

Princess Zulenna is shown early on with a bent wrench after apparently having done this to a guard who was between the Castle Wulfenbach students and the lifegliders they wanted to use to get back to the main part of the castle.

Around the turn of the 20th century, many manufacturers such as Bemis & Call designed their monkey wrenches to include a hammerhead on the back side of the wrench. They were meant to be multi-purpose tools rather than being overly specialized. They fell out of favor for lighter designs.

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